Managing ice merchandisers to keep them stocked with bags of ice has been performed by drivers of ice trucks, who visit sites and check the ice merchandisers visually to determine whether more bags of ice should be added. This process leads to wasted effort when the ice merchandisers do not need more ice. It also may lead to delay in refilling ice merchandisers and result in lost sales if not refilled quickly enough.
One proposal to begin to address such problems has been to add weight sensors under the ice merchandiser to weigh the entire ice merchandiser. This retrofit solution is not able to offer level information on more than one product inside the merchandiser and its components, all external, may be negatively impacted by adverse weather conditions or subject to tampering or vandalism.